The EARNEST Consortium, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is dedicated to identifying and advancing solutions for the future of the U.S. electricity system. As part of its public engagement, EARNEST is launching its first webinar series, focused on “U.S. Grid Reliability and Resilience.” This fifth session will highlight ongoing work by the EARNEST research team at Iowa State University.

Electric systems planners have been doing their work for a hundred years, to determine how to expand generation, transmission, and distribution systems, identifying the expansion in terms of what technologies to use, when and where to build, and at what capacities. However, there remains a need for integrating within planning processes investments benefiting costly “extreme events,” particularly those affected by climate change (e.g., high wind, extreme snow/ice, extreme cold, extreme heat, flood, droughts, and wildfires).

As part of the seminar, the research team will describe their proposed approach for an expansion planning tool for identifying a good balance between investments benefiting normal planning conditions, investments benefiting extreme events, and investments benefiting both. We illustrate the tool using a model of the MISO region, accounting for the August 10, 2020 derecho that swept through Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and other parts of the Midwest, inflicting over $11B in damage.